


Grains of Golden Absence

by nonky



Category: The Mummy Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 05:51:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17740181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: Prompted by marketchippie on LJ: The Mummy, Imhotep/Anck-Sun-AmunOh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,because in that moment you'll have gone so farI'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?I'm not sure which spelling of Anck-Sun-Amun or Anck Su Namun is correct.





	Grains of Golden Absence

When his muscles and tendons grew back and he flexed them, they shaped like her hips. Imhotep was not a man used to feeling powerless, but his own flesh hurt him for her lack. He did not have all the aspects of the ritual, and his strength needed to be much greater to resurrect her.

He took himself everywhere in what used to be his land; trying to find something that felt like something that felt like someone else. She was almost there, but it was never enough. The momentary tang on the back of his tongue became sea air. He wandered so far he saw ocean and couldn't think it was beautiful.

The adornment didn't go everywhere. Underneath her golden gowns, she was as naked as anyone. He could put his hands or mouth under her skirt as she braced just her fingertips on his shoulders. He had paid her eunuchs to allow him into her bath, and Anck-Sun-Amun's fine golden paint mixed with her juices and slicked down the outside of his thighs before they were done. They were unlucky lovers, but they had found bliss.

Common people were different. They had wealth and power, respect despite their lack of titles. They took trips for leisure, like kings in the toxic months of summer plagues. They carried folding furniture and sunshades down to the shore and lounged like only royalty used to be able to do proudly. Anyone without a crown would have been beaten for daring to enjoy the sun and the sky.

Children sat in wet sand and played, molding little kingdoms out of bright buckets. They wielded tiny shovels and laughed. Slaves would have fought bitterly over children as small being brought to work, yet it was a joy for the families Imhotep watched on the beach. He had no children, and the sticky, noisy chaos was strange. The palace's riches were not for children or happiness. It was a place to display but not to live.

She had practiced female potions very carefully. The king had not wanted a child from her yet, and Anck-Sun-Amun had to obey her husband. It made her sad, she'd admitted one day. She wanted a child, but it would be better to know it was of love - from her lover, not her husband. It would be better to feel like a lucky woman heavy from a good man, not a possession like a horse to be bred. Imhotep had understood. Gilded bodies were not meant for thriving and blooming motherhood. He would not make her sacrifice a child of love to save her own life.

People no longer sought a pallor to indicate high status. The people who made the most money were often the ones baking in the sun. The skin exposed was more modest than he might have expected, but his interpreter had explained in rushed Hebrew that the government concerned itself with such things as decency and appropriate clothing. Some of the pale foreigners probably needed all their shades and layers, but some gloried in what they called a tan.

She would be golden here, without the oily paints covering her body. She would run into the tide and throw her head back laughing as she called him to join her. Imhotep would abandon his noble bearing and follow. He had never thought she needed anything but herself to be beautiful and all his own.

It was unfathomable this was Egypt. He had looked at maps and tried to imagine the many rich landowners of the kingdom he'd served accepting the melt of lands into a single great nation. He was an innovative man, a man with imagination from a time where that made him a wizard, but he still couldn't grasp all the history between his time and this . . . future.

In his first life, most people aspired for afterlives. They appealed to gods and goddesses, and prayed endlessly. They lived in fear of luck turning against them, offending deities, crossing nobles or foul weather. Imhotep had lived, young and fearless. Her fear had held him back, but it had fallen away. Love made itself bigger inside her soul until the fear was pushed out.

He could not grasp being history, or that the rooms where he'd lain with Anck-Sun-Amun were buried. His mind was clear and his love hadn't aged a moment. He sank down to sit beside the water, tears running down the new skin of his face. Imhotep's fingers raked the grains of Egypt's new skin.

He thought of Anck-Sun-Amun in the underworld, ragged flesh on discoloured bones. He thought of the unaltered dark gleam of her eyes. He thought of her laugh and fine wit in murmurs hidden from everyone else. He thought of his curse, and knew it for a hope.

Imhotep licked lips that had so rarely kissed her mouth. He conjured Anck-Sun-Amun in his memories and felt as if he could build her out of sand and longing.


End file.
